Passion's Prisms: Tales of Love & Romance

Advice From a Hopeful Romantic

A.K. Wallace

WE LOVE. WE HURT. WE mend. We fall.

We each have been willing participants in this same dance for longer than is known, with minor alterations each time. The only real question ever being, How long? with no answers available, until it's too late. Despite the brief story, each chapter is longer than the last, filled with more than most will ever experience in their lifetime, with the hope in those pages serving to warm even the coldest of hearts, teaching what was once believed lost. Even during the trying times, there was never a lack of love or desire. The depths and purity of both served to reassure during the darkest of days while also suffocating the brightest. The beloved bond has become its own prison.

But then it never fails to happen. There comes a time, out of the blue, when you reflect on your past. Good. Bad. Happy. Not so happy.

YOU REPLAY EVENTS IN your mind and wonder if little alterations would have made any difference in the ultimate outcome. Are you better off today for the decisions made yesterday? If you could do it over, would you? It really doesn't matter because it's in the past.

We spend our lives searching for completion... Oneness with another... Love... Yet are never satisfied because we are impatient, impulsive and demanding. We invest in material items instead of relationships that can accompany us into our future because *things* we can see and possess. We are flawed, but seek pristine beauty in others, seldom acknowledging the perfection in another's imperfections.

* Be thankful for your experiences, regardless of any pain that may have accompanied them.

* Be grateful for the opportunities offered even if you didn't take them.

* Be at peace with the life you have now even if it isn't the one you thought you wanted.

* Live life to the fullest because it's fleeting.

* Laugh until you cry because it's the most beautiful sound ever.

* Love with everything you are because to do any less is a travesty.

* Never give up your dreams even if it looks hopeless because sometimes they become reality.

* Listen with your heart as well as with your ears because you are liable to hear the most important unspoken words of all.

* Take a chance because there are times when the risk is so very much worth it.

Time is the ultimate equalizer and everything always works out in the end.

Dance With Desire

Suzanne Parlee

The dance begins

sultry winds

feed the

flames

searching, reaching

burning the

blame

The music remembers

swirling notes like embers

feed the

soul

starving, hungry

make me

whole

The reddish glow

of a burning fire

feeds my

desire

touching, caressing

licking my thighs

higher

The scorching heat

over my skin

feed my

sin

moving, melting

my passion

...within

Ode to a Greek God

Marla Todd

I’D BEEN SIX THOUSAND years at the top of my game. I knew it was too good to last.

I was having breakfast on my deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean with the perfect amount of salty warm breeze drifting over me. A beautiful redheaded woman was still in my bed and I could still feel the warmth of her skin against mine. Fortunately she’d be gone in an hour.

I was having coffee and some amazing cheese and apple pastries my son dropped off that morning. I was also checking out a box Pan had dropped off with the pastries. That’s my son, Pan, the famous happy-go-lucky satyr who danced through the woods making merry. That’s over. He settled down about 150 years ago with a wood nymph named Gloria and they’ve been keeping domestic bliss ever since. I never thought I’d see the day.

Anyway, they were cleaning out some closets and found some stuff I’d swiped a few years ago. Thirty-four years ago to be exact.

It looked like I’d gone into the backpack of a college girl. I’d been in college mode that year for a change of pace. I was young, buffed and blue-eyed with a killer smile. Female heads all turned in my direction.

In the box was a silver hair clip in the shape of a flowering tree branch, a delicate sexy lacy cream-colored underwire bra size 32C, a seashell and a folded up piece of college ruled notebook paper. I unfolded the paper and read the words that would change my life.

It was a poem, written in blue felt-tip pen in a round, girlish script. No name identified the writer. I started to read, expecting the usually silly girlish babble about the meaning of life, teen angst and the horrible nature of never being understood.

What I read was something else entirely:

As I stood upon the steps,

Halfway between the land and sea

The messenger god Hermes

Came to me,

Swift footed and bright

But somewhat overtaken

By his cousin Dionysus’ last visit

He brought me a message

And I read it through his blue eyes

I bring you myself, he said.

No answer came from my lips

Except a kiss,

Which spoke very clear.

Oh happy was I,

When hand in hand

Under the stars we ran

For my mythical Hermes

Turned into a man

I took a gulp of coffee and stared at the poem. A poem about me? People had written poems about me, of course, but this was personal. It was a poem about ME, not a god of tales and lore but about ME, Hermes. It was about ME.

This girl knew me. I mean she KNEW me. She knew who I was. How? I never let on to any mortal to who or what I am. Never.

She wrote me a poem. It wasn’t a great poem. It wasn’t even a good poem. It wasn’t epic. But by my father Zeus, it was tender and sweet, full of the promise of love. It was happy. It was from her heart. A heart that considered me more than just a good body and maybe a great fuck, if I did indeed fuck her. I know I must have kissed her. I must have made love to her, because a girl who wrote the poem would never just fuck a guy. She’d have made love to me in a way I should have remembered, but damn it I couldn’t remember a thing.

A kiss. I tried to recall it. Such a kiss I should have remembered. It should have burned on my lips. It should have taken my immortal breath away. I sat, going through all of the dusty file drawers in my brain trying to remember, but NOTHING came to mind.

Don’t get me wrong; I am usually NOT the romantic type. I love women but I refuse to be the kind of guy or god who is going to turn into a jellied mass of so much romantic bullshit over just any female. Or am I? My stomach knotted up. My head spun. My heart beat faster. I thought I was going to throw up.

By the way, I am Hermes, the messenger god. I go by a lot of names but my friends and family and people who worship me call me Hermes. The Romans called me Mercury, but that is a completely different story, one I’d like not to bring up right at this moment.

So I closed my eyes to THINK. Thirty-four years. I tried to get a face. A location. Who the hell wrote that poem? There was a ski trip to Aspen and another to Tahoe. An uneventful week in Miami brought back no memories. Of course there were trips to Greece and Paris. The summer was spent in San Francisco and a little north of there was the beach house. Fall brought on New York and Boston. I was in Vermont for the holidays with my family (I know what you’re thinking and yes, we do get together for the holidays just like any other large dysfunctional family).

I heard a car start and looked back to the side of the house. The redhead drove away in her red BMW. I wouldn’t see her again. She got what she wanted and was happy. Fine with me.

Up the drive walked my cousin Dionysus, who happened to be staying at my brother Apollo’s place next door. There again, he was the PARTY GOD. Now he had turned into Mr. Bottle Shock. Always going up to Napa, Sonoma, Amador or jetting over to France, Australia, and all corners of the Earth for wine tastings. The guy had been going on about Lodi wines so much lately that I wanted to smack him until I tried them. He was right; it was the nectar of the gods. But really – Lodi? Have you been to Lodi? Despite all of that he was still my best friend.

He read the poem. Halfway between the land and the sea. She was at the beach house you dork.

Do you remember her?

Yes I remember her.

Who was she?

Miranda. Quiet girl with the pretty blue-green eyes. She was cute enough.

I’m trying but I don’t have a face yet.

Dionysus poured himself a cup of coffee, added about a gallon of milk to it and half a cup of sugar before sitting down.

She drove a beat-up old MG Midget. You talked cars. She was impressed by your Porsche. The two of you hung out all weekend making small talk. Saturday night you went for a walk on the beach and she had sex with you. You thought she was sweet. Remember? She was getting ready to go off to UCLA for the fall. You told her you were going to Harvard.

Pictures, smells, sound and feelings started to flood my brain.

She’d been there for several weekends. We always ended up talking on the porch, I said, as images started to come back into my brain.

Right. She liked you a lot but she didn’t come out and hunt you like the other chicks always did. It wasn’t until that last weekend that you acted on it.

I remembered. She was a cute, somewhat pretty seventeen-year-old girl with long brown hair and aquamarine eyes. At a party she wouldn’t have been the girl all the guys were after, but I noticed her. Well, she noticed me first. She started out talking to me about cars. From cars we talked about the tides and the ocean and movies and music and school. She wanted to travel to Nepal and spend time in Europe. Most of her friends were moving on to different colleges but she seemed all right with it. Her mind was set towards the future. I liked her company but she didn’t indicate at all that she wanted true love or a lasting relationship.

We walked on the beach. I made a few jokes and she laughed. She said a few things that were so funny it surprised me. I kissed her and a few hours later we made love by the base of a cliff in a private isolated area of the beach. She didn’t howl at the moon or put on a show. She wasn’t a virgin either.

Miranda let me take the lead but followed with quiet perfection. She lost herself quietly in the moment (which, by the way, lasted a good hour) and in me and didn’t ask for more. She could kiss too, and had an amazing body. What more could a young man want?

We walked back to the house to join our friends and she never said a word about it. The next morning she gave me her number and said, Call me, knowing full well the chances of me doing that were slim to none.

I never called her back.

Now,